The Sumitomo Group Public Affairs Committee strives to support college students’ negotiation skills, assist in upgrading higher education, and contribute to global human resource development through the
Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition.

The 12th Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition was held at Sophia University in Tokyo, November 30th and December 1st, 2013. This year’s competition featured students from 16 schools: Osaka University, Gakushuin University, Kyushu University, Kyoto University, Keio University, Sophia University, Chuo University, University of Tokyo, Tohoku University, Doshisha University, Nagoya University, Hitotsubashi University, Hokkaido University, Ritsumeikan University, Waseda University, and Nihon University. In total, 232 undergraduate and graduate students from these 16 universities enthusiastically performed and competed with each other throughout.

The competition is separated into two major parts, Round A which is the “arbitration” round and Round B which serves as the “negotiation” portion, with each part having both a Japanese and English version. Each team was divided into two sides, the Red company, which played the role of a railway and real estate company, as well as a travel and resort development conglomerate in the fictional country of Negoland. While the Blue company, played the role of a travel, hotel, and resort management company in Arbitria, a neighboring country of Negoland.

On the first day in Round A, the teams aimed to resolve these problems through "Arbitration" and very passionately argued their points and proposals. The point of the discussions were "the travel case" and "the hotel case". The travel case concerned the trouble caused from a mistake concerning hotel and cruise reservations. The Red company made the travel arrangements while serving as the travel agency vendor for the Blue company and the situation had to be settled. The hotel case covered the challenges stemming from the poor performance of a hotel. Negotiations began between the Red company, the owner of the hotel and the Blue company who was the vendor of the business management company that was running the hotel for the Red company. On the second day in Round B, during the "Negotiation" element of the competition, they debated on how to solve the problem from "The hotel case". It was training for a negotiation in a real business format and looked extremely accurate to a real world negotiation.

Judges

Every year, this competition receives assistance from many people and groups in judicial circles, professionals from each of the participating universities as well as the Judicial Affairs Divisions of various corporations who serve as judges for the competition. The comments from the judges after the enthusiastic performance has been a wonderful opportunity for students to receive valuable feedback and grow from the guidance of these professionals. Also recently, the numbers of both male and female alumni of the competition has been growing and now these former competitors serve as judges and staff for the competition, adding to the continued success and growth of the event

Results of the 12th Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition.

The awards ceremony is always surrounded by tension and every year contains drama surrounding the announcement of prizes to the delight and tears of the winning team or to the disappointment of the team that was not able to achieve its goal. As expected, the teams have been working diligently in preparation for this competition and this year, all of the teams had nearly equal merit more so than any other year. There could only be one winner though and this year, by a narrow margin, Tokyo University became the champion again for the first time in three years. Congratulations to all of the participants who took part and thank you to those who help make this event possible.

The final results for 2013 are as follows:

The 1st prize : Tokyo University The 2nd prize : Nagoya University The 3rd prize : Kyushu University The 4th prize : Chuo University The 5th prize : Sophia University